Hi. it’s good to catch up once again. It’s good as always to find the time to sit down and write this blog of mine and I intend to start blogging weekly again. Little by little I’m getting myself back on track and I think really that’s the most important thing. Today there were several people from my gym fighting at a local and very prestigious show in Bristol Noble Combat Championship. From looking at our WhatsApp group chat right now it seems we did well as usual. That’s to be expected.

It’s great to see that Revolution Phuket (I knew them as Sitsongpeenong when I trained there way back when) backs the show as well as other great organisations involved with combat sports, there’s a lot of talent at my camp and I can see several of the fighters going places in the next few years. When it comes to myself and fighting my attitude is that if I keep training hard, keep focused, and approach everything with the right attitude anything is possible.

It’s inspiring to train with people who push each other to be their very best. It’s good to have moved from feeling like I was going through the motions back to seeing little leaps of progress here and there. It’s good to see this and it motivates me to keep training and to take as much away from each session as I can.

Martial arts although not a magic fix are good to help navigate trauma and improve overall wellbeing and mental health. It meant the world to me recently to have a fighter walk up to me and ask me how I am and that he hoped things work out for the best for me. I’ve been very transparent with my coaches and other students about my mental health issues from both bereavement and trauma and it’s nice to train in a space where I have and always will feel safe and welcome. We are a family. I’ve been part of this one for over eight years of the sixteen-plus years of my Muay Thai journey so far.

Fight no1, Broadplains, Bristol 2010 fighting for Sakprasert gym and me.

Speaking of family I have been of course thinking of my own a lot of late. I saw my mum earlier this month and in July too and of course I’m back over in Spain in September. Bereavement and grief come in waves but the longer the waves have lasted the easier it becomes to navigate them and recognise them as they break on the shore. If my dad was still here (I think some days he is) I’m sure he’d be proud to see me walking taller and taking control of my life once again.

To say it’s not been easy is an understatement and with this and what appears to be PTSD and disassociation created primarily by the police and their abuse of my data the world at points has seemed like a very cold and dark place. Thankfully, good friends, fun times, and remembering to put me first have helped me navigate the parts when things seemed bleakest. As the saying goes it’s always darkest before the dawn and now there’s a light at the end of the tunnel I’m walking taller than I was six months ago.

I’m starting to draft some of the text for the scrapbook about my dad’s life this evening. I’m doing this because it’s taken me over two months to get to this point. I’m doing this because my mum needs me to and because it’s something that like this blog and like my writing and my dad’s writing will tell a story. My father was an important guy and a beautiful human. Just like me, he had a free soul and I miss him more than words can say. Like my dear friend, Ahmed once said I am him. I am his legacy and because I am everything I do celebrates his life.

You may wonder sometimes if I see my mum in the same light as my father. The answer to that is absolutely. She lobbied an MP with one of his sisters to get the Met police to back off and leave him alone when he came here without a passport fleeing the apartheid regime in the 1960s and they won.

She was married to him for over forty years and loves him fiercely. She taught me to embrace my African roots and has always loved everything I do with martial arts. She trained in Judo for a few years in her youth. She’s a feminist, a former head of two departments at my old secondary school (Dad was at one point the head of English at a College in Cambridge), and anti-racist to her core. She taught me as did Dad not to take it lying down and to stand up for what is right and to be proud of who I am. Most importantly she’s taught me how to be free and back in the day she traveled all around the world and saw all seven wonders. I’d love to do that.

Families in my life take different shapes and forms from my Muay Thai family I train with day in and day out, my mum and relatives and my closest friends who have known me for many many years, and even just my mates I see now and then. The one thing I notice about all of them is that despite it all we’ve got each other’s back and we are there for each other no matter the weather. Some bonds are impossible to break and although friendships and relationships can change over time the people who check in on you when you are not at your best are your people Keep those people close always because just like the last time, they’ll see you on that road.